Chuckle

A
man and his wife were arguing about who should brew the coffee
each morning. The wife said, "You should, because you get
up first, and then we don't have to wait so long to get our
coffee." The husband said, "You're in charge of cooking
and you should do it because it's your job, and I can just wait
for my coffee." Wife replies, "No, you should do it,
and besides, it is in the Bible that the man should do the coffee."
Husband replied, 'I can't believe that, show me.' So she fetched
the Bible, and opened the New Testament And showed him at the
top of several pages that it indeed says.. "HEBREWS."

Thought

We [are told to] love our enemies because God loves our enemies,
and we want to live in the Life of God.


Fr. Stephen Freeman

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JONAL
ENTRY 1267 | March
22 2013

. . . they proclaim
their sin like Sodom, they do not hide it. Woe to them! For
they have brought evil upon themselves. Tell the righteous that
it shall be well with them, for they shall eat the fruit of
their deeds. Woe to the wicked! It shall be ill with him, for
what his hands have done shall be done to him.

If you've
watched or listened to any broadcast news today you may know that
a major
spring snowstorm is beseiging Europe now, possibly the same one that
arrived in the mid-Atlantic and much of the rest of the American east
several days ago and still has not completely worn itselt out. Though
I've been seeing snow at a few feet higher elevation than where I
live in Belfast since my arrival in Ireland last Wednesday, this is
the first that has come all the way down to the lower elevations of
the city. I've seen more snow today than at any time since moving
to California some 45 years ago, and I'm enjoying it through my front
room window. Here's a video of that, embedded from my YouTube page:

One
of today's
lenten Bible passages (one of the same ones, I daresay, that the church
has been reading on this day of lent for centuries) seems to speak
directly to current events. The U.S. Supreme Court will hand down
a major decision on "gay marriage" soon, and now New Zealand
is reportedly the latest nation whose government is about to legalize
it, as many European nations already have. The Prophet seems to be
referring to the former U.S. military policy of "Don't ask, don't
tell." The proud should be ashamed to proclaim their defiance
of God's guidelines for sexuality, he seems to be saying, but instead
they are proclaiming it, proudly, as a right, even an entitlement,
of democratic societies. So Godly people must, I think, wonder whether
and when our western civilzation will be destroyed (or self-destruct)
like Sodom did.

Years ago, I remember,
a network news anchor editorializing about a then-current trend in
the sexual revolution to accept greater license for things generally
held, in all civilizations throughout history, as taboo. "Many
men," he said, "may cheat on their wives, maybe even most
of them in some time in their marriages, but none would claim that
such behavior should be accepted by society." He was making the
same point, I think, that Isaiah does here: It's one thing to sin,
to fall, to miss the mark; another to claim sin is the norm or socially
expected and accepted. I can't imagine any of the network anchors
of today making such an assertion. Drinking 32-ounch Big Gulps may
be sin today, even requiring new laws to stop, but now every form
of fornication is normal.

Being
snowbound today
has given me more time to occupy myself with diversions than at any
time in recent history. You'll notice, if you watch the video linked
above, that it even impelled me to FaceBook, a place I seldom visit
and had been eshewing. One of my sons and his wife gave me an iPad
mini as a going-away present, another brand (Apple) I had been eschewing
for decades. But they wanted the children to be able to keep in touch
with their O'Pa through the iPad's built in video-chat application,
Facetime, so I've been getting acquainted with my iPad and we have
already had our first Facetime, an amazing means of free long-distance
communication. And I've been finding that FaceBook and YouTube are
different on the iPad in ways that might make them addictive, or at
least more frequently used.

We'll
see.

§ § §

If you missed
my overview of this venture in Northern Ireland, check it out here.